Trinity Sunday Year C (Part 2)

In our baptism, joined in hypostatic union with the Son who stood abandoned for us, space is found for us to regain our identity as children of God, united with the Father through the Spirit.

The Gospel of John can seem a bit confusing at times. It's because the language reflects the union of the three figures of the divine story, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (You can think of God as a story or a movement of love, into which we are inducted through baptism, sharing in God's life.) Take todays' Gospel reading:

He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:14-15)

The three - Father, Son, and Spirit - are so intimately connected to one another that to speak of one leads to the others. None can be cut off from any other. Today, the Spirit reveals Jesus, but everything that the Father has is Jesus' also, so all are present in the revealing of the Spirit. But notice that in their mutual presence none of the three loses their particular identity in their union with one another, while, on the other hand, never falling into a crass individualism. Indeed, the more the Son is the Son - that is, deepening his relationship to the Father- the more he is the Son in his identity as Son. (One reason why the naturally relational language of Father/Son in trinitarian language won't go out of fashion.) This is personhood, not individualism, and without the great sea of undifferentiated being in the background for us to be dissolved into. Personhood implies identity and relationship.

Made in this image, we reflect God in our inter-personal nature as human beings, for others are always present to us, one way or another. When we receive another person others are also present with us, at least in some manner, or perhaps a variety of ways. This mutual presence to one another is a common human experience hinting at the fullness of our being and our lives, and the whiff of the future blessedness of creation. (The experiential antonyms of mutual presence are also common: loneliness, despair, anxiety, revenge, murder, self-loathing, self-conceit, etc.) 

Here we meet also a trinitarian basis for forgiveness. And I am not talking about the forgiveness that we receive upon repentance - most of us can offer that kind of 'forgiveness', at least sometimes. Instead, I am talking about the asymmetrical, pure forgiveness of God. (See here.) In forgiveness, the Father refuses to lose the other (the sinner) and the Son restores to us our true identity as children of God. (Rom 8:12-17) In the Son's abandonment on the cross and in his resurrection and ascension, we can never be lost. God remains present to us, even in our human weakness, failure, and sin. (Romans 5:6-11) 

This is why I have difficulty conceiving of hell as popularly understood. We are never alone, even the damned. In the abandonment of the cross, this holds true, especially so for the abandoned/damned.

Crucifying the Dividing Walls of Humanity

I know that the obvious boundary in the Bible is Old/New Testaments. I prefer to make the split Genesis 1-11 and the rest. Genesis 1-11 contains those stories we might say are universal. I read them and understand that I am being described, as is the world, and our universal, human predicament.  (E.g. Noah and the flood, here.) God's response we read about from Genesis 12. (Here.) The universal predicament of humankind brings a particular response, God's call to Abraham and Sarah to leave their secure home and to wander the promised land in faith, and God promises that through them all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Gen 12:1-3.) Paul makes much of this (Rom 4 & Gal 3) including that marvellous claim that this blessing to the Gentiles is the Gospel! (Gal 3:8) This blessing is manifest in the union of humankind through the dismantling of the barriers that divide us. (Acts 2:1-11 compare Gen 11:1-19 see here, here, here) These barriers that divide us are universal, and our universal predicament. They have as their root human envy, rivalry, arrogance, and the violence to maintain and create dividing walls, all to be found in increasing intensity as we read through Gen 1-11. Christ saves us from this predicament, by bringing us, Jew and Gentile, together through the cross. (Ephes 2:16, but Jew/Gentile as paradigms of all dividing walls, see Gal 3:27-29.)  And that is the extraordinary thing. Crosses maintain the barriers. Jesus, accused blasphemer, crucified to maintain the wall that divides, brings us together through that very instrument of violence and division. Through Jesus, handed over into the hands of sinners yet vindicated in the resurrection, Satan's ruse (here) is unmasked for those with eyes to see. That which divides us - the accusations, the pride, the rivalry, all of it - and that crucified Christ, is now crucified to us so that it is Christ who lives in us. (Gal 2:20)  

This is why St Paul rails against division and the sort of attitudes and behaviours that cause it. (1Cor 1:10-17, and notice he then launches into his great proclamation of the power of the cross, 1:18-25. See also Rom 12:3; 1Cor 8; 11:17-22; Gal 5:16-26.) Division in the church insults the Gospel itself, for our unity in Christ is integral to the Gospel, not an added on extra. If you don't believe me search and see how often Paul links poor behaviour and its renewal to the death of Christ and the death of our old nature. (E.g. Col 3:5-17.) And notice how Paul's explanation of faith, law, grace, and justification can lead to his reflections on God's promise to Abraham. (See Rom 1-3 leading into Rom 4, and then keep reading into Rom 5! Also, Gal 2:15-21 leading into Gal 3.) 

In an age of intensifying polarization, with accusation and counter-accusation, here is a mission for the traditional church. Traditional churches eschew fads, do not have a cause derived from Jesus (that is a cause having a life apart from Jesus) and are wary of the heightened emotionalism and easy judgements of the mob. Nurturing this and living into our unity in Christ, while still holding a variety of opinions on different topics (often divisive topics in the world around us) is not an easy road. But because it is the gospel itself it includes cross-work (Mark 8:34-35) but also freedom and human dignity, and the whiff of resurrection.

Am Important Detail at Pentecost

Acts 2:1-12 tells the story of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the disciples after the Ascension of Jesus. It is easy to miss the significance of a small detail embedded in the story. It is crucial that the disciples are given diverse tongues rather than the hearers enabled to understand the (single) dialect of the disciples. Imagine if it were around the other way, with the listeners enabled to understand the one language. Christianity would be another religion, a religion in which God's word is uncluttered with the varieties of human culture, indeed of human experience. A religion that perceived variety as an impediment to unity, or should I say, an impediment to uniformity.

    Christianity affirms that humans don't have to be translated into a monoculture.  We don't have to reject who we are, where we come from, how we have learnt to be human, to be Christians. Hence the church's commitment to translating the gospel into the language of the people. Christianity is a religion in which variety is celebrated, and this variety is not an impediment to our unity.  There still remains a gospel to be heard, and this gospel will change us and the languages and cultures in which we express ourselves. While retaining its integrity, the gospel is accommodated to the human family in all of its variety. We don't become who we aren't to be able to hear the good news.

Not that this little detail in the Acts story begins God's accommodation to the variety of the human family and all creation.  The pedigree stretches way back.  Most especially so in the Incarnation, with God becoming human in Jesus so that we can share in God's life as human beings. (John 1:14; 2Corinthians 8:9) 

    And this story is not the only example of Christianity's insight that variety is not the enemy of unity. Christianity likes bringing together that which is usually separated. A doctrinal example is the doctrine of the Incarnation. According to the belief of the church expressed in the creeds,  Jesus is not a mish-mash of divine and human, nor some divinised quasi-human. Think here, for example, of the Creed of Chalcedon, 

... without confusion or change, without division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together ... 

The union of that which is usually apart - divine and human. This union provides us with a glimpse of our future in God: union with God without our diminishment (or God's).  But if Jesus were in some way not fully human and fully divine the little detail in the Pentecost story would have to be the other way around. And we would have to change St Paul's reflection in 1Corinthians 12 (especially vv 4-7) on the variety of gifts given to the church. So too the Christian insistence that our final fulfilment is not to be dissolved back into some great sea of being, but to be who we are, in Christ united with the Father, through the Holy Spirit. (1Cor 15:20-28.) And we would have to change our doctrine of creation. In Christianity God not only permits 'the other'/creation, but loves creation, providing creation with its own integrity. (Christianity is not pantheism.)

    All of these examples speak of God's sensitivity to our particularity and personhood, and the variety of all creation in which God delights. So, of course, when the Spirit is given the disciples speak in diverse languages rather than the Spirit squeezing the listeners into a cultural straightjacket.

Cheap and Costly Unity

"... so that they may be one as we are one." (Jesus, John 17:11)

While reflecting on last Sunday's Gospel passage (John 17:1-11) it occurred to me that unity and union, with God and with each other, is costly. And in the same way that grace is costly - although humans have a tendency to seek the cheap version - so too unity has its costly and cheap versions. The union Jesus looks toward comes at the cost of his life. It is costly, and our discipleship of him is costly, just as the unity in Christ we seek is costly.

Iain McKillop, Jesus' High Priestly Prayer in
John 17, from a series of 7 paintings
 focusing on that last night and Gethsemane.

A reason why unity in Christ is costly is because it does not end the quest for unity prematurely. Human societies feel safer when identity and unity are attained and can then be protected and enjoyed. What I like to call mutual back-slapping (the kind of human unity built on mutual affirmation within narrow parameters of behaviour or belief, and applies to most human organisations, associations, sporting clubs) stops too early in its quest for union. Prematurely ending the quest for unity is why mutual back-slapping doesn't have the capacity to go very deep, and when it meets conflict, has the tendency to paper it over. Moreover, while it might appear that mutual-backslapping groups are relaxed about diversity, this relaxed attitude is because the diversity is not actually part of the unity itself. (Cf 1Cor 12:4-11)  The hard work of including diversity and 'the other' isn't carried through. Community built on mutual back-slapping also falls easily into its alter-ego of the attack-dog, pointing the finger at the 'accused', forming a temporary but false unity on the ostracised.

Churches are called beyond this kind of tribalism (both the mutual back-slapping society and the attack-dog gang are tribalistic). Jesus reminds us of the cost of unity (see John 11:45-53) but also its provisionality. It is because the work of the Spirit in uniting the human race is not yet complete that churches are asked to hold themselves open to including the outsider, and work to make difference a foundation of their community.

This is exactly why unity is costly. Unity grounded in diversity changes the community as it stands, and makes the life of that community less comfortable. When the current unity of a congregation is considered provisional it means that congregation is saying that it expects, even wants, its current identity to change. New people will mean a new identity, both for the existing members of the community and those joining it, requiring both some personal and group dying.

When unity and its cost is understood like this much of the New Testament focus on Christian disunity (e.g see 1Cor 1:10-31; chapters 5-8; 11:17-34; chapters 12-14) and the confusion to identity that new members (Gentiles) bring (to faithful Jewish Christians, see the Gospel of Matthew; Acts 15:1-21; Galatians 2:11-14) becomes understandable. Whether it comes through the personal call to die with Christ or a community's call to die to its current secure identity, union in Christ comes at a cost and humans tend to resist that call.

The Goal of Self-Denial

Once there was an ascetic who struggled his whole life to reach perfection. He distributed all his goods to the poor, withdrew into the desert, and prayed to God night and day. Finally the day came when he died. He ascended to heaven and knocked on the gates. 'Who is there?' came a voice from within. 'It's me!' Answered the ascetic. 'There isn't room for two here,' said the voice. 'Go away!' The ascetic went back down to earth and began his struggle all over again: poverty, fasting, uninterrupted prayer, weeping. His appointed hour came a second time, and he died. Once more he knocked at the gates of heaven. 'Who's there?' came the same voice. 'Me!' 'There isn't room for two here. Go away!'

The ascetic plummeted down to earth and resumed his struggle to attain salvation even more ferociously than before. When he was an old man, a centenarian, he died and knocked once again on the gates of heaven. 'Who's there?' came the voice. 'Thou, Lord, Thou!' And straightway the gates of heaven opened, and he entered

.

I think this is from Nikos Kazantzakis, God's Pauper, but I am not sure. When I reread it some day I will find out!

Surrender and Healing

The Christian faith is about union with God. But to be united with God we have to give up everything – even ourselves. Making ourselves, securing ourselves, controlling our lives, our futures, our desires, our image and identity, dying to self. And in this dying we are found in God, and we discover who we truly are. All the rest is stripped off as we come to live more and more into God. It is quite harsh for it calls for a death to the usual things about ourselves that we would all think quite reasonable. And you can get a good glimpse of it when sick, diseased, facing an operation, wearing out, dying. Our fears come into play. What will happen? We are losing control. Things could happen that we don’t like. We try to gain control.

I remember hearing about a group who believed they would never die if they had enough faith. All those who died had obviously no faith! (I kid you not, such a group existed in Adelaide!) Tlak about the denial of reality, trying to gain control by manipulating God. It is a temptation for all of us, especially in the dark times of illness etc. A last ditch attempt to deny reality or escape it. A way of manipulating God. (Pray harder; and when the outcome is not what we wanted and we say, "Why did God not listen?" Well, what a give away!) When I had an operation a few years ago I discovered something about myself. I couldn’t trust myself to God. I wanted a certain outcome, and I wanted God to make sure it happened. All normal, of course, but it is not what Christian healing is about. Christian healing is not about using our faith to get what we want. Facing the darkness of sickness etc. is an opportunity to deepen our surrender to God. Anointing with the sign of the cross in the name of Jesus provides a clue: the cross is the symbol of losing life and of surrender; faith in God is not a shield from the reality of our lives. We get sick, injured, wear out, and die. Faith is about trusting in God no matter what. Its easy to trust God when everything is going smoothly, a different matter when we are in the darkness of suffering. That’s when the rubber really hits the road.Can we give our lives to God? Can we trust that all shall be well, no matter what? Can we give up our very selves in the promise of gaining life? That’s what healing is about. Sometimes the outcome is what we want. Eventually it won’t be. But that’s beside the point. The point is knowing that in the light of the resurrection of Jesus all shall be well. No matter what.

Sex

Some basic affirmations that need to be said explicitly.

1. The Christian faith is holistic, therefore it makes no sense to separate permanently body and soul. Without the body, soul makes no sense, and vice-versa. Our relationship with God makes no sense without our body, and this applies to salvation.

2. Thus the body is both the locale of experiencing God's love now and reflecting God's glory now and in the future. (Discipleship and resurrection) Sexuality, as a facet of our bodiliness, are to reflect the glory of God.

3. Sex is body and soul. When we reduce sex to only body or soul we are escaping from the closeness of reality and the depths and complexity of being human.

4. Heterosexual sex can lead to pregnancy and children. This is to be carefully considered when having sex.

5. Sex can help intimacy and the self-giving and receiving of intimate relationship. It is legalistic to think that sex is only permissible once a couple have been formally married.

6. Sex is about pleasure not just popping out babies.

7. Both salvation and sin swirl around the human experience of sex. Because sex is tied up with desire, intimacy, pleasure, joy and 'nakedness', it can also have devastating results in our lives. However, for these same reasons it is a sacrament of God's love and salvation. Sex is also one of the most important images to think of our relationship with God and salvation. (E.g. union)


Commentary

The Song of Songs is an explicit love song, with symbolic sexual language within it. It has been spiritualized in the Christian tradition. It is easy to imagine this was done by some because of discomfort with the physicality of the content. The physicality of our existence, our relationship with God and our salvation has been, and continues to be, problematic for many Christians. Christian discomfort with the Incarnation has the same root as discomfort with sex: it is about real human life in all its reality, messiness, sweat, blood, tears and complexity. However, the intuition that has interpreted our relationship with God in terms of the physical relationship between two lovers is correct and utterly orthodox, traditional Christianity. Human bodiliness and God go together.

These days we rarely meet the obvious rejection of our physicality and bodiliness in the church. (An exception is the rejection of the resurrection of the body, but I have posted on this before, many times.) The rejection of our physicality and the ultimate union of creation and God in Christ is masked these days. One of the masks used is the rejection of promiscuity. Of course we are critical of promiscuity: Christianity takes our bodiliness seriously, a bodiliness that includes all our ways of relating faithfully. Promiscuity undoes faithful relationships and can lead to great hurt. And when it doesn't but retains a casual, meaningless character, we are critical of that meaninglessness in something so profoundly intimate. It just isn't right. But, our criticism of promiscuity is not an excuse to import any lingering discomfort about our physicality and sex. And that is what happens, and it happens a lot.

For example, the new orthodoxy required by all Australian Anglicans that says sex can only happen between those who are formally married. So I cannot have on parish council someone who is in a sexual relationship who is not formally married. So you can be in a defacto marriage, have grandchildren from the relationship, and sorry, don't bother applying for any ministry position. Ridiculous, but that's typical of those still uncomfortable with their physicality and its messiness and complexity.

If people are sharing their lives and growing in intimacy, with the intention of continuing in that growth in intimacy faithfully, sex should not be legalistically prohibited. The legalists just can't bear the idea that people are moral beings and that in the complexity of human growth in intimacy legalisms don't hold. As in all legalisms, people are driven 'underground', and those in authority (except for the maniacal and ideological legalists) turn a blind eye at some point. Corruption, corruption ... Better to be sensible in our acknowledgement of our bodiliness and in our regulation of sexual relations.

Finally, because soul and body go together sexual relations are one of the important metaphors for our relationship with God, the act of redemption and our eventual salvation in Christ. I mean the metaphor of union. It's sexual through and through.

All Souls Day

Where do we go when we die? 'Heaven', or 'Up there', to live with God. [True enough, as long as we remember God doesn't occupy space literally. God transcends time and space. Better to think of God as somehow else rather than somewhere else.] Another answer might be wherever Jesus is. And we are on a better track now I suspect. Perhaps an even better answer is to reframe the question from where we go to with whom we will be with. And the answer to that question is 'Jesus'. Our salvation - heaven if you like - is entirely through Jesus. This is the most basic point of the Christian gospel: Jesus and the Spirit allow us to enjoy the same relationship with God that Jesus enjoys. Where God is, that's where Jesus is, and that is where we will be. Or if you prefer a less spatial metaphor, the relationship that Jesus enjoys with the Father, we too will enjoy through and in Jesus. Faith unites us with him, so that we enjoy the relationship of love that we name Father-Son/child in the Trinity.

But the answer to the question 'with whom will we be with' is not only Jesus. We believe in the communion of saints, which is not just talking about 'saints' as the particularly holy, but the communion of all those who have been made holy in Christ through the Spirit. Salvation is not to be conceived principally about us individually enjoying God, but as a communion of all the blessed in and through Christ, together with Christ, enjoying Christ's relationship with God.

What Would Be Left?

If the Word were removed from Jesus, what would be left? If your answer is 'his flesh/body', please read on. The right answer is 'nothing would be left'. This is because it is the Word who becomes flesh. (John 1:14) The Word doesn't just take on an outer suit of flesh, or is the soul bit in Jesus. God became human.

Say it to yourself: God became human. Is it plausible? How can God become flesh and still be God? The trendy answer is that God can't be human and God. (But that is really only the case if humanity and divinity are in competition.) And this trendy answer ends up in one of two places: a kenoticism whereby God is divested of divinity in becoming human; or making God's true identity dependent on us (E.g. Moltmann). But God can be utterly human and utterly God. This speaks to us of a "compatibility" (I think I read this from Rowan Williams, but he means this without in any way denying the complete otherness of God) between God and humanity. But it also tells us something of the true transcendence of God: God is utterly transcendent, which is to say not that God is utterly remote (that is the false interpretation given to transcendence by those wanting a straw figure to blow down), but that in God the usual rules of intimacy and identity (a tension between them) don't apply to God. God can so unite Godself with flesh and still remain fully God, and in this union bring this flesh into existence. And this without in any way compromising the integrity of the flesh. Or, to put it crassly, God can 'make' that which is not God precisely by uniting Godself with it. (Only God is so surpassingly free to be able to do this, and this is what true transcendence is about, and the significance of God being somehow else.) This flesh is then God's own flesh. And so, to return to the original question, if the Word were removed from Jesus, nothing would be left.

This is all about unity in distinction, which God is very good at. Think of the Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit, each with their own identity precisely in their complete unity, and in complete unity precisely because of their distinct identity. This is the point of the eternal Fatherhood of God: 'Father' is a distinct identity, but implies a relationship to be 'Father' in the first place

Or should I just say that God is love, and we know this because of Jesus Christ? Love is about union and distinction at once, and both to their fullest degree. This is the point of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and tells us our ultimate end in God (Christian hope does not dissolve our identity into some more basic lava of 'being' called God, but hopes in a union of personal love), the God who is Love.

It's All About Union

There are many metaphors used to speak of our relationship with God, and what Jesus has done for us in his death and resurrection. But I am going to make a statement which is not fully thought out or researched, but intuitively seems right. All of these metaphors (e.g. beatific vision, messianic banquet, forgiveness of sins, etc) are summed up in the metaphor of union with God. I realise that this is using one of the metaphors as the metaphor, but it seems to me that this metaphor takes us directly to the underlying consistency of the Christian gospel. Our end is to be united with God, and we see this end in Jesus. All the other metaphors fall under the power and meaning of what this metaphor refers to: our deep and abiding union with God through Christ and the Spirit. The forgiveness of sins is a good example. An absolute ton has been written about the forgiveness of sins, and some Christians make it the determining metaphor for Christ's work of salvation. There is nothing wrong with this as long as we realise that 'forgiveness of sins' is about union: sin prevents our union with God; forgiveness of sins makes union possible.

The doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity teach us this. They are, if you like, the abbreviations of the whole Christian schema. They direct our theology as the spectacles through which we read the rest of our experience, and guide us in our interpretation of Scripture. Both doctrines are about union: the union of humanity and divinity in Jesus, and the union of love of Father and Son in the power of the Spirit within the Trinity. Some metaphors have a natural affinity with this abiding vision of God, others need its correction. Forensic metaphors (like judge) are useful, but need to be kept in contact with the union of love we call the Holy Trinity.